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My husband and I are currently living in Ohio, and hope to move within the next year or so. We're not sure where, we just want to be someplace different (no offense to Ohioans!) We're taking a lot of factors into account in where we might go- cost of living, job opportunities, climate- but I thought I'd see what you all had to say about another. What would you say are some of the most- or least- Pagan-friendly towns in the US?

Most: Salem, Massachusetts. Has the highest concentration of metaphysical shops, occult bookstores. Has a ton of covens, a huge pagan community. Massachusetts period is probably the most tolerant state in the country. That or Vermont.

Florida has hidden pockets. For instance my area: Melbourne is very tolerant, and Palm bay and has a hidden voodoo, hoodoo, and obeah crowd. The whole area is friendly to New Agers, tolerant to pagans, and the African-Diaspora traditions are kept hidden(such as has always been done). Most white folks have no idea. In Florida look for Metaphysical shops, herbal shops, stores with African names , small bottles of liquor or change in graveyard's. These are either hubs of activity(or fir the last one) signs of activity.

Agree with this. I rarely have an altercations, having lived most of my life in Mass. Salem is really fun during October, but I like it in the off-season as well. Most major towns and cities have a New Age shop.

How has no one said Bay Area yet? Bay Area! We're home to Pantheacon, the world's largest pagan convention, and there's more covens in 100 miles of me than anyone knows what to do with. Last saturday I went to Spiral Dance, a 1200+ person ritual.

I'm doing 5 different things for Samhain, there's two events that I know I'm missing, and I'm sure there are dozens of others that I don't know about that I'm missing. Half my friends out here are pagan, and that's without deliberately seeking them out. Some of the most respected public voices in paganism live here including many of the elders of the Feri, Reclaiming, and Heathen traditions.

Bay Area fails hardcore at reasonable cost of living, but we're awesome on job opportunities and climate.

I live in Oakland, CA and have SUCH a hard time finding pagan events & such on my side of the bay. If I lived in San Francisco I'd be good but here in Oakand/Berkeley there is not much to choose from. It is really pretty disappointing.

CAYA Coven is based out of the East Bay. Their Samhain stuff was last weekend, so you missed that, but they have rituals every full moon in addition to the sabbats. They can get a little fluffy sometimes but they're fantastic folk. They're some of the first people I met in the pagan community here.

Feast of the Mighty is happening in Oakland this Friday and while the feast tickets are sold out, there's still general tickets and also room for volunteers (who help serve food and get in for free). No idea if other Coru events will be in Oakland or elsewhere; the next public ritual is going to be at Pantheacon, assuming it's accepted.

I think Diana Paxton and her Heathen folk are located out of the east bay somewhere, but I don't have personal ties in that community so I couldn't tell you.

Sacred Well (which is staffed mostly by CAYA folk) has rituals on a regular basis. I went to one of their Aphrodite ones and it was cool, although not my thing. I'm sure they can also point you to other local stuff.

Thorn Coyle also lives in Oakland and has semi-public rituals at her house occasionally.

I was going to attend & volunteer at Feast of the Mighty but went to buy my ticket and saw it was sold out :/ I was really looking forward to the feast and don't really want to attend if I can't take part in that.

I guess truthfully, I am looking for something less "commercial" too. More options to find the best fit. I would love to find pagans more focused on nature and less on theatrics. Large public events don't hold what I am looking for.

CAYA is bookmarked for me but their events page never gets updated on there website so I don't know how to find out about there events. (I just joined the facebook group so maybe that will help)

I will check out Thorn Coyle & Diana Paxton.

Ok, after all that I realize that there actually are a good amount of options, I guess I just haven't found any that fit what I am searching for. Ah, the search continues.

Not sure what you mean about CAYA's events page. It gets set up near the start of the year with all the info and that doesn't change. The dates are all there on the Events Calendar and the places are the same; co-ed rituals are always at the UU church, full moon and women's only are always at the yoga studio. Granted it's not the most organized thing ever.

Feast of the Mighty definitely still needs volunteers. If you're interested, PM me your email and I'll pass it on to Rynn Fox, who's the volunteer coordinator. The volunteers will help serve food, and also get to participate in part of the ritual. Pretty sure the volunteers also get to partake of the feast. Rynn can clear up any questions you have on that or anything else.

I wouldn't confuse events focused on theatrics with pagans focused on theatrics. It's hard to get a bunch of people together and just be in nature. Although Community Seed's outdoor rituals down in Santa Cruz are nice. Still very theatrical, though - their Wizard of Oz-themed Lughnasadh this year was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, Reclaiming is the only SF group I know about, too. But their rituals are pretty huge. I really need to get down to more of them since I have some friends that are very active in Reclaiming. I'm not a huge fan of the politics, though.

I'd rather live here than anywhere in the South (yuck), or the East Coast (been there done that), or somewhere fashionable where gas, taxes, rent, and groceries are more expensive - such as the Pacific Northwest (no jobs anyway).

As far as the secrets of your city are concerned - they are frequently published on meetup.com, if you are lacking in the company of like-minded and/or kindred spirits.

...AND the stories? Um. We had a large D&D game (set in middle-Earth because cliche) going for about 2 years: 9 players, 3 gents total in the group, pagans all of us. Shit was wack. Other stories there are as well...

I'm a big fan of Crone's Hollow. Not only do they have a well-stocked and reasonably-priced store, there is a parlor with a coffeeshop, there are readers daily (also at reasonable rates), there is a large open space for rites, rituals, and events both open and closed, as well as classroom space with A/V.

Western Washington (State) is a good place for pagans. We have a smattering of covens and larger Pagan groups.

To the best of my current knowledge, we have some British Trads, a bunch of Fey, and a toss up of various other experimental kinds of groups.

The ATC (http://aquatabch.org/) Mother Church/Retreat House is located 2 hours from Seattle, up into the Cascades. They host and produce two annual festivals: the Spring Mysteries Festival - a 26 year old recreation of the Eleusinan Mysteries - and Hekate's Sickle Festival - a Samhain festival. The ATC just appointed a new Archpriestess, and it looks like a lot of new interesting stuff is in the works.

OLOTEAS ( http://www.oloteas.org/) is here as well. I'll leave them to people who are more in the know to describe. They host a Concentric Circles event yearly which showcases local covens, and they have a Mabon event that, at the last I heard, was called Fires of Lugh, although its name may have changed.

The OTO (http://www.seattle-oto.org/) is pretty nice up here too if you like OTO things - the Seattle OTO has been producing rock operas of Several of Crowley's more well known Rites.

The weather is generally nice, the people are generally tolerant, and the atmosphere is kinda Geeky. Or hipstery, if you're in those neighborhoods.

We have Microsoft, Google, Boeing, Nintendo, and Wizards of the Coast among many other big places that seem to be always hiring. The job market is a bit inundated, but people generally tend to survive well.

We have a temperate climate, and the weather is generally pretty mild all year around. If you like a light rain for half of the year and you think people with umbrellas are silly folk, then you're halfway home already. All the way up and down the West coast is a pretty good place to live. The mountains are beautiful and majestic, and we really do love our Evergreens.

Eastern Washington, however, is a completely different story, and I don't suggest it.

We moved to South-Eastern Arizona earlier this year and even in our rural area there are 3 metaphysical shops within 30 minutes and I see a lot of psychic readers and Pagan bumperstickers. I am super open about being Pagan and have had no issues at all

Iowa is super tolerant for how conservative some of the Christians are, but, as with just about anything else aside from corn, college sports, and drinking, there's not much going on in the pagan scene.

I live in Texas, and honestly most people are so ignorant about anything other than christianity that they don't notice. Even the most hardcore christians that recognize my pentagram usually don't say anything about it, and just go about their business. Grannys, and women will give me dirty looks, and even some super conservative men give me dirty looks but that's about it.

Cast my "don't" vote for Bend, Oregon. There are pagans here, but I've never met a more gunshy group of people anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. Everybody here seems terrified to admit they might not be completely Christian.

Even the Atheists aren't as paranoid. I'd love to know what happened here.

Plus votes for pretty much any other urban area in Oregon or Washington.

I don't think she is. But it's Sign of the Hawk leather. I know she recently opened up a physical storefront and I'm pretty sure it's under the same name as her stall at faires. Can't seem to find her website, though.

I could be mis-remembering. But I know I very recently heard something about Bend from someone pagan and I think that's who it was.

Believe it or not, I'd put Raleigh, NC on the list of great places to be pagan. Sure, we have a megachurch and there's a lot of Christianity on the radio. But, we also have Central NC Pagan Pride, a fairly active generalist pagan church, and, being centrally located in the state, it's not hard to find ways to get to other pockets of paganism, including Iðavelli Hof in Hillsborough (I met some members of the Hof at CNCPPD this year, and they're great people), if it suits you.

Granted, this is also a state in which a woman responded to her son's school's giving away donated bibles by bringing in spellbooks. She was turned away. Later, someone called her to make death threats, which the police investigated. However, last I heard, the school system in that county has changed (or is in the process of changing) their policy on religious material. The county in question is also 3-4 hours west of Raleigh.

Lancaster County, PA is a little ironic in a way... the area is mostly neutral, with heavy christian influence, but there are so many Pagan based business and gatherings in downtown Lancaster, which nobody has an issue with at all. you have stores like Radiance, The Gem Den (which recently joined another local business, Bead Works, so they can afford to stay in business, but dont let that fool you, every crystal/stone/etc. is 100% natural and at least mostly cleansed, aka, very little effort needed to cleanse or clear them), as well as the longest running fresh market in the USA, as well as #4 in the world for the freshest foods, Lancaster Central Market, and First Friday which is an arts event that covers all of downtown Lancaster every first friday of the month, which includes private vendors, a lot of which are Pagan themselves.

side note: if you like the arts of any kind, that is also a huge focus in downtown lancaster too.

Stay away from the Bible belt... and some small towns in the mid-west. Colorado and New Mexico are very pagan friendly as well as California and maybe some select places in the south west and western seaboard area.

Sedona, Arizona is very Pagan and gorgeous. The energy that resonates is mind altering, its amazing. And if you want to go outside of the US, The Isle of Mann, it is the only country that has Paganism as its official religion and its gorgeous. Also Seattle is fairly Pagan.

I would disagree about listing Florida as least tolerant. We have Florida Pagan Gathering twice a year, many covens and festivals, and drum circles on the beach every full moon up and down both coasts.

I recently moved to Philadelphia and it seems to have a lot more open minded people than anywhere I have been before, and I was from the midwest. It is still hard to find Pagans in large numbers but the more I look the more I find, and yes NYC does have a lot in that area from what I can tell.